H.G.
We just hunted 4 of them down in the past week in my house! Im not humane about it. A dead mouse is a-OK with me! We got the old school snap traps and put peanut butter on the end. Got every one of them! Try it it worked for us!
UGH! I am sooo sick and tired of the mice! We have traps out but they are to freaking smart. I have done the traps, sticky paper, humane traps, Natural repellants (dryer sheets, peppermint oil and nail polish remover soaked cotton balls, dryer sheets) and they are still here. I have been more adament about keeping food in the fridge and in mice proof areas. What else can I do? (and we have NO money for an exterminator)
I haven't thought or heard of the steel . . . I think I need to go to the store. I know where some areas are and have put peanut better filled traps. They got the peanut butter out with out setting the traps off. I was proud of me though! The first mouse I saw ever in this house ran into a storage bag of mine and so I quickly trapped it and then took the bag to the tub. I let my dad take it from there. BUT I CAUGHT IT!!!!!
IF this was my house ( I still live with my parents. Thank you economy) I would have had a cat from the beginning :( I miss having cats, but my dad is so allergic that he just has to step onto a drive way where a cat lives and he starts sneezing.
lol Thanks Spidermonkey, I feel the same way. If your in my home, I'll take you out. If you are in a field, you can stay there. We have several of the snapping traps along with the fancy twist ones. Nothing yet. So far the only mice we have caught is the one that I caught in my bag :D still rather proud about that.
I would LOVE to have a dog, but we are renting and the landlord doesn't want dogs :( My dad keeps trying to talk to him about it. My mom wants a dog BAD.
We just hunted 4 of them down in the past week in my house! Im not humane about it. A dead mouse is a-OK with me! We got the old school snap traps and put peanut butter on the end. Got every one of them! Try it it worked for us!
Do you know how they are getting in? Plug any areas around garage, basement where they are coming in with steel wool. I'm not a fan of cats, but maybe you could get one is foster one :). I hate mice! Good luck.
When we got mice the pest control people we are contracted with told us to use the glue traps and put a little bit of peanut butter. Apparently they really love peant butter! We started to trap them super fast once we did that. You really want just a tiny bit in the middle so they can't get it all over the trap and make it slippery. You then have to figure out how they're getting in and seal up all the areas that you can to keep them from coming back. It took a little bit but they finally went away and we haven't had them since. Mice can get into holes as small as a dime at least, if not smaller. So you may need to put smaller screening on vents etc.
ETA: I've seen a couple people mention using poisons. One thing against using poisons. You now have dead bodies in your house that will begin to decompose and smell up the place because you don't know where they're actually going to die. Also, if a cat (or other animal) eats that mouse you have now poisoned that animal as well. I strongly recommend against using poisons in the case of mice as do our pest control service.
Have you pulled out every appliance and checked behind it? This nasty situation happened to us in two different homes. The first time the contractors had left a giant hole where the dryer hookup was and it connected to our earthen semi-open basement (I called it the "Silence of the Lambs" basement), so the lovelies were entering there. The second was a big hole by the water attachment for our fridge in the other house, and it opened to the crawl space. Check it out!
Bleeping mice, indeed. We've had mice infest the ventilation system in our car AND in our truck at least once a year for the past several years. We pay $250 a pop to get the nests and most of the smell removed each time. We use a whole array of different traps and repellents in our parking shed, plus a warfarin bait. It probably slows the problem down a bit, but we have resigned ourselves to the fact that mice will keep finding those nesting sites. There's no affordable way to create a mouse-proof parking facility.
I did find a hole in our siding that was letting mice invade our home, and blocked it with a wad of aluminum window screen. No interior mice for nearly a year now. Good luck.
So I know people have said peanut butter--but we found mixing chunky peanut butter with honey was the only bait that worked. Plus, make sure the traps are along the walls, as mice prefer (but obviously don't always) to move along the walls. Mice are so frustrating! Good luck.
use mice traps that snap and put peanut butter on it they cant grab n go. also take sticky pads and tape two together(on the bottom) place a glob of peanut butter in the center. place mint leaves all around where there are holes or places you know they can get threw. use steal wool to seal all small holes use moth balls all over the place, BEST OF LUCK TO YOU
Try a snickers bar on the trap, much more appealing to the mice and ALOT harder to get off
I agree with Mj.. if you do not plug up the way they are getting in, you will never get rid of all of them.
Steel wool, wire and nailing boards over holes.. You can also throw moth balls around in the attic and under or around your home. Just make sure your children do not eat them.
Get a pair of kittens.
i put steel wool pads into the cracks in the basement. i also used caulk and sealed all the windows. they have spray foam that expands at lowes.
i put it around all pipes that come in the house. that worked for me.
I think the poison is suppose to be the best treatment for getting rid of mice but it is poisonous to children as well so kids must keep away. Good luck...
Poison them. Put it where your kids can't get to it and that will get rid of them. I tried everything you have and had no luck until we poisoned. It stinks that you have to do it, but it's better than them getting into your food. And don't kid yourself that they aren't.
good luck!!
plug up holes in the house with aluminum foil, they hate having to go through it. Stuff it in their really good. They don't like the smell of ammonia, so clean any area with droppings in it. Give it a good soaking. Clean up everything, every crumb, all the time.
We used the TomKat Spin Trap you can get it at lowes-2 for 5 bucks. Add a bit of peanut butter in the bait hole. I caught all of my mice in it.
Try to find out where they are actually coming from ( most droppings, nests, etc) and put traps there. Also, pick up anything they can make for a nest-clothes,towels, blankets. Check couches for holes,etc..
I had this situation with bleeping mice one week ago. We had a family living here, three babies( who we caught on our own), and three adult mice. Hoping that we caught every one. I had to pull out all of my furniture,appliances, tables,and flip over my couches. Give everything a good vacumming, cleaning. Do this every other day. With this, we were able to corner the mouse in a selective area of the house ( under kitchen sink). Put all food in containers. It made me have OCD for two weeks, but it's nice to not find droppings everywhere in the house. The aluminum foil works well. My parents used this to plug up their holes. Oh, I also have started feeding our stray neighborhood tabby cat. If you aren't allergic to cats, I would strongly encourage adopting one.
Good luck, hun.
We are going through the same thing right now. We are trying everything. Sticky traps with peanut butter seems to be the best....One is being pretty elusive and I wish we could just catch it already! Ugh....We will try the snap traps next.
I haven't read your other responses, and am not sure how "humane" this is, but we had an infestation and we bought a box that electrocutes the little pests. It is quick and clean. I don't have to touch the mice, where they were killed or handle a nasty snap trap that heaven only knows what has happened on it. We caught 5 in 2 hours, 10 in a day and a half, and haven't had a issue since. We keep the trap going (only requires 1 AA battery) and nab them before they can reproduce.
hope this helps!
this year's horrible for mice! & 2 funny....our dog caught one tonight. He's been tracking this one...which has been really bold (or really stupid!). Tonight the dog was quick enough to grab it & then played with it like a cat would! Our older dog was freakin' out watching the whole event.....
Peanut butter is working for us....hope it continues working!
At my old house (about 10 years ago) we had a lot of mice. I, of course, thought they were adorable and used to save them from our cat, who would catch and then play with them, torture them, etc. I ended up keeping one as a pet...then two...then three...so then the odds were against me. Soon, I had about 30 pet mice. Of course, I built them this huge "mouse town" thing with lots of aquariums, tubes, etc...went all out...
and they started chewing THROUGH the plastic to escape. So I put a quarter over the hole and taped it over with duct tape. Then they chewed threw that. I am NOT exaggerating...the things CHEWED through a quarter.
Why am I saying all this? I dunno...an illustration, I guess, as to why they're called "pests." VERY hard to get rid of. I agree you need to block their entrance, and then do your best to (please, humanely) get rid of the ones you have. A cat honestly might be your best option (and being a part of the food chain, I think it's humane.)
I second the steel wool- stuff it in wherever you think necessary, this worked for us.
Is your dad allergic to dogs? A Jack Russell or a Rat Terrier might do the trick better than a cat-- they're called RAT terriers for a reason! My dad likes to tell about how when they'd empty the corn crib at the farm each cat would catch ONE mouse and play with it, but the Terriers just kept snapping them up....
We have mice in our pantry, mice in our cupboards, mice in our garage, mice everywhere. We tried the sticky traps and they are a mess. We have pets and kids so poison is not an option. We do have the electronic repellant and have found that it will repellant new mice, but not drive out any current mice. So this works well once you have trapped any existing mice. We keep the plastic snap traps baited with chunky peanut butter set all the time and I catch 4-8 every week. We found that the plastic traps work better than the old wooden ones.
My neighbor had mice in her car and tried many different things as well to get rid of them. She recommend a product call "Fresh Cab" and you can get it a Murdochs. It is a botanical fragrance that repels mice. She thought it was a little strong smelling, but it smells like Christmas trees to me...way better than mouse!! I just got it and I guess we will have to see if it works for us.
My exterminator relative recommends old-fashioned neck-snapping traps baited with either cooked meat or marshmallow smushed hard into the bait holder. I've tried both, and they do work. (I live in a 100 year old house, and get more practice very fall with mouse-trapping than I'd like.)
Mice don't like moth balls, try putting them in cupborards, and basement and garage. You only need a few, you can tie them into old or unmatched socks. If the smell gets to strong you have too many out. You can also use mint LEAVES not oil.
If you have a friend with cats use the used uring soaked litter as a barrier around the outside of your house AFTER you get rid ot them.
If you buy the special bar bait, they'll eat it, it will poison them & make them really thirsty. They'll leave the house looking for water. If they do happen to say inside your walls when they die, they'll be very dehydrated & won't stink.
We've had mice in our cabin. A few years ago, we got sick & tired of them! We bought the bar bait, sticky traps, PB on regular traps, & they all seemed to work well. We never had any problems with them stinking it up after they died. My mom has SUPER NOSE & can smell even the tiniest of stinky smells & she's never even smelled any stinking rotting mice corpses. Also, if you go to the hardware store & buy one of those things that you plug into your electric socket. I'm not sure what they're called, but they supposedly send out some sort of sound signals that the rodents HATE. We bought one & plugged it in about 6 years ago at our cabin & we haven't had a problem with mice since. We had 2 mice in our house when I was pregnant with my daughter (now 6) and after I trapped them, I bought one of those plug in boxes too. I haven't had any since then either. (We even have a field right behind our house & a dirt crawl space.) I think that the plug in box was around $30 or so.
Good luck!
Shellie